


Human Nature

by misc



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 08:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misc/pseuds/misc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Cas takes a bullet for Dean while hunting</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Nature

Hunting became a rather different ordeal after Castiel fell from heaven. He had to be taught more about guns, about walking quietly, about interrogations, and about pretty much everything else.  


Dean was a patient teacher, much to Sam’s surprise, and was almost always willing to review how to clean and load a certain type of gun, and offer tips. It seemed to Sam that he enjoyed how Cas looked up to him for advice. After eight months had passed since the night the angels fell, Cas had become a regular hunter, and was almost as good as the two Winchesters.

They were dealing with a particularly nasty demon in a barn ten miles south of nowhere, after she had drawn them towards her with a string of gruesome murders. As they entered the building, she appeared at the back of the main room, laughing through her blond hair streaked with gore.  


“Well, well, well. Look who got my message.” She drawled, leaning against the wall. Cas stiffened as Sam moved as if to attack. She lazily flicked her fingers, and he went falling backwards.  


“Sam!” Dean shouted, but Sam had already gotten back to his feet, rubbing the back of his head.  


“Don’t worry, Dean. If I wanted your brother dead, he would be. But today, I want something different. I have the _Winchesters_ to play with, for God sake.” Her black eyes glinted and she smiled down at the three boys. “How about a game of cat and mouse?” Cas moved as if to speak and she threw him back in the same manner she used before. “Of course, that would put me too far in an advantage for any fun, so how about this,” She pulled a gun out of her back pocket, and the fallen angel and the brothers jumped back. “We’ll all use guns. It’ll be like _The Most Dangerous Game.”_  


“What are you-” The older brother’s words were cut off as she spun around and disappeared through the door behind her, shrieking with joy as she ran. There were no words needed for the hunters to know what to do, with a quick glance around, they all started running through dilapidated room after room in search of the monster.

Cas and Dean had gone into one hall and Sam into another, and Cas was looking down a staircase to a cellar while Dean moved forward. Dean was in the doorway to the next room, as Cas was turning to follow, when she appeared in the opposite entrance, fingers wrapped around her pistol.  


In the moment it him took to notice, Cas had already started to move towards her. “Dean!” He shouted, as the older Winchester whirled around, raising his own gun. The demon’s fingers twitched around the trigger, but Cas was on her feet and moving fast. The blast rang through the building, as Cas rammed into her from the front. The recoil from the explosion of the gun and the impact of the other body colliding with her own sent the demon careening back, where her head hit the ground with a sickening smack.  


“Cas!” Dean screamed.  


Sam sprinted in from upstairs and emptied his gun into the girl on the floor, screaming the exorcism at the same time until she choked out the black smoke and fell dead.  


Dean gently rolled Cas’s limp human body over and propped him up in his arms, as the sticky crimson died his shirt a cheery red. “Cas! Oh my god. Can you here me?”  


Cas coughed, and struggled to sit up, blood lining the inside of his lips as his fingers fumbled at the wound in his stomach.  


“Don’t move.” Dean ordered. “You’re going to be fine.”  


“This is a pretty nice way to die.” Cas murmured, blinking up at his friend  


“Don’t say that. You’re not going to die.”  


“Your optimism is nice, but unnecessary.” His words were garbled almost to the point of incoherence, and as Sam crept closer, hands over his mouth, Dean bent down to hear him. “I’m glad I could die saving you. It only seems right.”  


“You’re not dying. You’re going to be fine.” He turned to his brother as tears carved their way through the dirt on his cheeks. “Sammy, call an ambulance.”  


Sam Winchester had never before heard his brother say those words, since he was usually firmly in the ‘pour alcohol on it and you’ll be fine’ school of medical care, and the panic that choked both their throats made his fingers fumble at the buttons on his phone faster than he though possible.  


“911, what’s your emergency?” The cool female voice on the line answered  


“My friend’s been shot,” Sam started to talk in the phone, voice rising in hysteria.  


Cas coughed again and blood spattered onto Dean’s shirt as his body stiffened with the effort of speaking. “I never really did get used to it. Being a human.”  


“Don’t talk.” Dean whispered, voice shaking  


“It’s harder than it looks. And it hurts a lot.” A sheen of sweat had broken out on his forehead and his words where choked as his eyes slid closed. His chest rose and fell unevenly as he struggled to breathe. “I’m glad I had you to show me what to do.”  


Dean was bent so close; he could feel Cas’s warm breath on his cheek as he spoke. And he felt when the breath stopped coming.“Cas! Oh dear God, No. Cas!” Dean was screaming now, and Sam dropped his phone and moved closer, as Dean’s head slumped forward. “You have to wake up. Wake up, Cas.” Dean pleaded, knuckles whitening around the fabric of of Cas’s shirt, practically shaking him.  


“Dean, let go.” Sam ordered, his voice like broken glass as he struggled to stay calm  


“No, Cas. No please, you can’t leave me. Not now.”  


A siren wailed in the distance, as Sam grabbed on to his brother’s shoulder. “Dean, you need to let go of him.”  


“No.” Dean repeated  


“Dean…” Sam trailed off, throat aching with the effort of speaking as his brother dipped his head forward, kissing the top of the fallen angels head, rocking him back in forth in his arms as his back arched and shook with sobs.  


“Cas. You deserved more time. You needed more time. _We_ needed more time.”  


Before Sam could think of anything he could possibly say, even if he could talk through the nauseous grief running through him, Dean screamed. Cas’s lifeless eyes stared towards the celling as the sound rang out through the room, dragging years of buried pain and fury and anguish with it. He screamed until his throat was raw, as Sam watched with tears pouring down his cheeks.  


Eventually, Dean fell silent, still holding to the motionless body. Neither spoke until bright lights and happy sirens came to take them all away.  
Unfamiliar hands grabbed Cas, and dragged Dean towards the ambulance, murmuring scary things like “in shock” as Sam looked on before he too was led off.  


The doctors pronounced Cas dead, and Dean and Sam watched them fold the black plastic over his serene face in their blood soaked clothes, with their arms around each other. No one could get them to let go until hours after. A far away voice told them they were going to be taken to the hospital and then questioned, but it didn’t even occur to them to run or fight or fake their way out of it.  


Their lives had been torn apart and thrown into the mud, as police talked to them again and again and Dean was put on a suicide watch in the hospital. Sam begged him to talk, begged him to not give up, but he just sat with his head in his hands.

"I loved him. I love him." Dean would murmur and all Sam could tell him was that he knew, and so had Cas. 

It was months before they were really ready to leave, to drive off, to start again. Dean's face had hardened from believing yet another person he loved had been killed because of him, and Sam was exhausted and crumbling apart. 

But they were the Winchesters, so they would keep going. With lines on their faces and revenge pumping their blood, they would tell each other they were fine and drive off, ready to shove bitterly on.

**Author's Note:**

> For people who might not know- The Most Dangerous Game is a short story by Richard Connell in which a man is forced to hunt or be hunted by an insane man.


End file.
